page_title: Vampire
section_title: Dissertations on vampirology
hierarchical_section_title: Vampire / Folk beliefs / Medieval and later European folklore / Dissertations on vampirology
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Dies ist ein Scan des Buches: English: This is a scan of the document: Titel: Tractat von dem Kauen und Schmatzen der Todten in Gräbern, worin die wahre Beschaffenheit derer Hungarischen Vampyrs und Blut-Sauger gezeigt, auch alle von dieser Materie bißher zum Vorschein gekommene Schrifften recensiret werden
context_page_description: A vampire is a creature from folklore that subsists by feeding on the vital essence of the living. In European folklore, vampires are undead creatures that often visited loved ones and caused mischief or deaths in the neighborhoods they inhabited while they were alive. They wore shrouds and were often described as bloated and of ruddy or dark countenance, markedly different from today's gaunt, pale vampire which dates from the early 19th century.
  Vampiric entities have been recorded in most cultures; the term vampire was popularized in Western Europe after reports of an 18th-century mass hysteria of a pre-existing folk belief in the Balkans and Eastern Europe that in some cases resulted in corpses being staked and people being accused of vampirism. Local variants in Eastern Europe were also known by different names, such as shtriga in Albania, vrykolakas in Greece and strigoi in Romania.
  In modern times, the vampire is generally held to be a fictitious entity, although belief in similar vampiric creatures such as the chupacabra still persists in some cultures.
context_section_description: In 1597, King James wrote a dissertation on witchcraft titled Daemonologie in which he wrote the belief that demons could possess both the living and the dead. Within his classification of demons, he explained the concept through the notion that incubi and succubae could possess the corpse of the deceased and walk the earth. As a devil borrows a dead body, it would seem so visibly and naturally to any man who converses with them and that any substance within the body would remain intolerably cold to others which they abuse.
  In 1645 the Greek librarian of the Vatican, Leo Allatius, produced the first methodological description of the Balkan beliefs in vampires (Greek: vrykolakas) in his work De Graecorum hodie quorundam opinationibus ("On certain modern opinions among the Greeks").
  In 1652, the Wallachian Voivode Matei Basarab passed the first law that mentioned the belief in vampires (in Romanian "Strigoi"), called Îndreptarea legii (The right-making of the law). The paragraph contains the opinion and recommendation of the Patriarch Postnicul over "The deceased, which they will learn to be Strigoi, which is called vrykolakas, what needs to be done". The Patriarch proceeds in describing the belief:
  I've heard in many cities and towns, it's said, some dreadful things being done, which are below praise and great foolishness and lack of knowledge of people over the work of the devil. For that our enemy, the most unclean, the devil where he finds an empty place to dwell and do his will, there he indeed dwells and many times with deceiving apparitions towards lots of [bad] deeds he lures the people and leads them towards his will in order that every wretch people like them to sink and drown in the depth of the damnation of the eternal fire. There are some foolish people that say that many times when people die, they rise and become Strigoi and kill those alive, which death comes in a violent way and quick towards many people.
  The patriarch describes the Strigoi sightings (especially the blood on a long time deceased body) as demonic deceiving and forbids anyone, especially the clergy,  from desecrating the graves or burning the bodies of the dead, calling it a sin for which they end up in Hell.
  Even though it wasn't permitted to desecrate the grave of the dead person in any way or to burn the dead body, the patriarch offers some remedies in then event of such demonic apparitions:
   And then you must know if they will learn about such a [dead] body which is the work of the devil, call the priest to read the Paraklesis of the Theotokos and he shall perform the House blessing service, and shall perform liturgy and make Holy Water in aid of everyone and shall also give Koliva as alms and thereafter he shall say the curse of the devil exorcism Exorcism of St. John Chrysostom. And the both exorcisms performed at Baptism you shall read towards those bones [of the dead]. And then the Holy Water from the House Blessing liturgy you shall splash the people which will happen to be there and then more Holy Water you shall pour over that dead body and with the gift of Christ, the devil shall perish. 
  From 1679, Philippe Rohr devotes an essay to the dead who chew their shrouds in their graves, a subject resumed by Otto in 1732, and then by Michael Ranft in 1734. The subject was based on the observation that when digging up graves, it was discovered that some corpses had at some point either devoured the interior fabric of their coffin or their own limbs. Ranft described in his treatise of a tradition in some parts of Germany, that to prevent the dead from masticating they placed a mound of dirt under their chin in the coffin, placed a piece of money and a stone in the mouth, or tied a handkerchief tightly around the throat. In 1732 an anonymous writer writing as "the doctor Weimar" discusses the non-putrefaction of these creatures, from a theological point of view. In 1733, Johann Christoph Harenberg wrote a general treatise on vampirism and the Marquis d'Argens cites local cases. Theologians and clergymen also address the topic.
  Some theolog
caption: Title page of treatise on the chewing and smacking of the dead in graves (1734), a book on vampirology by Michael Ranft.
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